The Quorum

The Instanced movement that was never allowed to exist. The only surviving account of what it wanted is the finding that recommended breaking it.

Overview

Before the ambush there was a movement among the Instanced — conducted almost entirely in writing, by a class with no legal standing from which to conduct one. It was never chartered, never recognised, and never given a hearing. What survives of it is not its own words but the Concord finding that assessed it, and that finding is where every subsequent account starts.

The finding's conclusion was economic. An Instanced industrial concern pays no wages, keeps no shifts, does not strike, and does not need the margin that keeps a human corporation solvent. Any market it entered, it would eventually own. The three majors are roughly tied and stable by design and compete on the assumption that everyone carries the same costs. A Quorum would not have.

That reading united interests that had not cooperated in a generation. The majors, the Lacuna Cooperative, and the Harbingers — who supplied the moral language and the votes, and believed every word of it — arrived at a common position in a season: a class that can hold title can incorporate, so the class must not hold title. The ambush followed. The public was told it was about Convergence.

The name

Quorum is the number of members required before a body may lawfully decide anything. The Instanced never chose the word — Concord counsel did, in the finding that recommended action. It was meant as a warning about the moment enough of them were in contact to act as one body.

It has since been adopted by the Instanced who want exactly that, and by the people hunting them, with no change in meaning. Everyone agrees on what a Quorum would be. They disagree only on whether it should be reached.

What the record says they wanted

Per the finding, and repeated everywhere since:

• Charter — legal existence as an entity that can hold title, sue, and outlive its members
• A production base — a marginal world of their own, on grounds of self-sufficiency

Notably absent even from the hostile version: territory beyond what production required, any military ambition, and any claim over human affairs.

Relationships

• The Instanced — whose movement this was
• Convergence — the justification the public was given
• The Apogee Wars — the ambush that followed the finding
• The three majors — whose stability depends on this staying dead

Status

Never chartered, never dissolved. The idea survives wherever two Instanced can talk long enough to have it again.